Interviewing Your Future Boss? 447
crimethinker asks: "I am an embedded systems engineer for a small division of a large company. Up to now, we have managed to get by with little more than a 'team lead' position, but as our division grows, they are looking to hire a full-on engineering manager. I was one of the candidates, with my current boss's favorable recommendation, but I withdrew my resume when they told me the job was all paper and schedules; I'd never touch code or hardware again. Now the VP has a 'short list' of candidates, and has invited me to be one of the interviewers. Yes, you read that correctly: I will be interviewing the person who will become my boss. So, I put the question to you, Slashdot: what questions should I ask my prospective boss?"
Don't ask job related stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
You're the only geek on the panel most likely... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd come up with a list of 10 to 20 buzzwords that you use in your everyday conversations and e-mails, but keep that list secret from the candidates. See how many of those words each canadidate mentions in proper context as they talk with you and the other interviewers.
The point of this exercise isn't so much as to hire the high-scorer like it's a video game, but so that you can have a reason to veto somebody who is talking in generalizations but can't come up with the terms for what you actually do. Basically, your whole point is to eliminate anybody who is likely to become a PHB character if given the job because they don't know what you do.
from a I/O psychology point of view... (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever hired anyone before? (Score:5, Interesting)
-Ask them if they understand the nature/scope of the job
-Ask them to describe relevant experience (professional, not futzing around on their own time)
-Ask them to describe any characteristics/attributes that make them a good choice for this job
-Ask them how they would handle any particular circumstances you either expect your operation to encounter, or some that you have encountered in the past that could have used some good leadership
-Etc.
Basicallly, when interviewing, you really only need to concern yourself with KSAs - knowledge, skills and abilities. Note that interpersonal communication and team skills are VERY critical KSAs. I value them more than actual technical or academic skills - those can be taught. The former, not as easily.
I sat on the committee that hired my current supervisor. She turned out to be one of the better administrator's we've had...
Focus on the supervisor-employee relationship (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider questions like:
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully reformed a poor-performing subordinate
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully communicated expectations with staff
a) describe a situation in the past when you felt you successfully motivated staff using incentives/rewards
Your goal is to try to get an idea of what it would be like to work for this person under good and bad circumstances.
Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
What bossing is all about (Score:2, Interesting)
I think one of the most important properties of a boss is Trust. Trust is at least two dimensional. To trust a boss they must be competent in their roll and they must have your best interests in mind. I think any questions about their experince and skills for the tasks they must perform are important. Secondly, you have to figure out if they care about you and your success.
I would suggest the book Topgrading [topgrading.com] by Bradford Smart as a good reference for asking the right questions and asking them in several ways to correlate results. Interviewing should be a lot like taking a survey. Best to ask the same thing several times for verification.
Re:I would... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't want to be in management it doesn't mean your career is a dead end.
If it's strictly about money then in most organizations you won't make more than your manager even if you deserve it - but then, if you're in it for the money you should probably start your own company. A consulting company, for example.
But it's probably not strictly about money for this person, or he would've taken the management position. Lots of tech workers are much happier doing tech work than doing bureaucracy, and find greater rewards in challenging projects and creative freedom than in a slightly larger paycheck.
As for the resentment, it's possible, but hopefully the manager they hire will not be one who is insecure about their choice of career path, or about someone else deciding against it.
Bottom Up Managers (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the CEO didn't like that, which is, I believe, why he was fired about a month and a half after I got there. The CEO wanted a yes-man mouth piece who would see to it that we were broken into generating the response numbers he wanted, not tell him what the rest of us knew full well, that his interpretation of the numbers was asinine and counter-productive.
(I lasted about another month after that before I was canned as well. Wheee!)
Before you interview ANYONE, speak to your upper management and make sure you and they are on the same page about what you're looking for. What you want is someone who will go to bat for you and keep upper management and customers out of your way. The CEO may want the same, or he may be looking for someone he can give a directive to who will then crack the whip on the rest of you to do it. If you don't figure that out now, you're going to only scare away potential good managers and the person you get will be so torn and confused that they won't be able to do a good job for anyone.
Why not... (Score:5, Interesting)
... ask for references? I.e. people both who he as worked for, as well as people who have worked for him?
If he's not willing to give such references, especially of the second kind, that's an answer as well.
Technical supervisors (Score:1, Interesting)
*keep the existing drones happy
*make sure they have enough to eat
*get them whatever resources they need
*get more projects for the hive
*get more drones for the hive
similarly, they need to be able to:
*resolve conflicts between drones (usually by telling them what to do, even if it is the wrong thing to do).
*cull the weak or unproductive
*either take responsibility for when the drone makes mistakes or fire them right then, depending on the anger of the higher-ups and the perceived value of the drone (not who is responsible or how big of a mistake it was)
*set deadlines and resolve interdependencies in larger projects
*occasionally (if needed or not) crack the whip
*stand up to higher ups, when necessary, and stand behind drones who stand up to higher ups (but then chew them out behind closed doors).
Your boss doesn't need to be good at what you do. You don't need to be good at what they do. It helps that they understand what you do, but at the same time, it helps that you understand what they do.
It was a mistake to walk away from the job.
good luck
Re:"What is your opinion on.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, taking a short nap will increase productivity; and his view on naps might tell you a lot about flexible workhours...
Personally I might want to work 12+ hours when I'm getting a lot of work done, and during the days that it feels like I can't get anything done I want to leave early... and as long as I'm getting the work done on, or before, the deadline that ought to be ok.
Re:"What is your opinion on.. / styles / problems (Score:3, Interesting)
While the naptime comment is funny, there is some validity in asking similar questions.
Breakthroughs in better ways to do things often present themselves during what is often considered "unproductive" uses of time like coffee breaks, a short walk across the company campus or even a brief nap. If those types of activities help you work better it's definitely worth asking about.
You should also ask the candidates to describe their leadership styles and management styles, and to provide concrete examples of how they have applied them in the past.
Ask how they deal with problems with personnel and projects. There is no such thing as a project or company without problems.
workaholic detector.... (Score:2, Interesting)
#1: they are average looking or above and their spouse looks bloody awful (was nice once but having kids/stress/drinking beer has killed their looks) or has 6 kids who look like little shits
or
#2: they are average looking and the spouse is fantastic looking (for male candidates - the wife is a 'trophy wife')
steer clear. workaholic alert. in #1 they want to stay as far away from them as possible. in #2 they need to continue to bring home the big bucks to fund the lifestyle to keep the spouse interested.
awful to say but this is true, it took me years to understand this. find somebody with a balanced home life so they don't want to be at work 24x7
bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
he/she needs to trust your experience
he/she needs to knwo how to address issues with upper managent, perferable without you knowing there ever were issues.
he/she needs to be able to learn the industry relationship with vendors.
If you say "I need part xys234", they ned to get you that part quickly, and as inexoensively as possible. That do not need to know what how it works. By the time they aroder, they should now what it does, but not in a technical way.
You do not want someone who is going to try and use there technical expertise to 'get you something better'. which happens very often when geek move into managment.
he/she should care about you getting done what and when you say something will be done.
Thay do HAVE to trust your experience.
Re:Ask more about Life, less about Tech. (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago I worked at a company with an 8 person IT dept, an IT boss, and a CEO above him (maybe 40 people in the whole company). The IT boss was fired and we needed a new one. The CEO and CFO interviewed the candidates and then let the IT guys talk to each candidate for maybe 15 minutes without anyone else there. The biggest deciding question for us was "What's your favorite band?" One of the leading guys answered a contemporary Christian band and the other answered "Slayer". The big bosses were on the fence and we begged for them to hire the Slayer guy. Bad move. By far the worst boss I've ever had. He was probably a pretty cool person, but just an aweful boss. My direct superior literally wouldn't talk to me for 2 months at a time.
-B
Re:"What is your opinion on.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, we don't lead text-book lives, and sometimes you just feel tired. There's 2 ways of handling this: stumble on and make mistakes trying deperately to keep awake; or take a quick 15 min nap, then carry on refreshed.
It's the early afternoon just after lunch that gets me. Food in my stomach, quiet-ish warm office, soft purr of a dozen computers.... zzzz
But I work like a demon, and get stuff done when asked. If there's fires to be put out, I won't be dropping off to sleep -- I'll be right there helping out.
Besides... we had the 'do not disturb' function disabled on our PBX ages ago -- so I'm always available by phone.
Re:from a I/O psychology point of view... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have any evidence to back up your "most reliable indicator" claim? Has anyone actually given intelligence tests to a statistically relevant number of hires, and then tracked them to compare their successes? I'm sure there is a correlation, probably even a strong one. But I would guess that stronger indicators exist, and I'm very sure that the work done so far on intelligence testing is insufficient to justify your claims.
make sure he can do two things (Score:3, Interesting)
Does he/she have children? (Score:5, Interesting)
This means that they:
1. Have a life outside of work, and will understand that you do to.
2. They are used to dealing with illogical childish tantrums, and so will be well able to deal with upper management and the marketing department without it affecting you - and they will resist behaving that way themselves.
3. Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
You shouldn't have so cavalierly turned it down (Score:5, Interesting)
Managing schedules and pushing papers and pencils, yes, this is a lot of the manager's job. But there's also strategy, technical direction, mentorship, hiring (and eventually firing), and more influence at the higher levels as the company grows.
That might not be what they tell you, but that's what it inevitably becomes if you're a manager that has any influence at all -- and being promoted internally, that's most likely what you'll get.
Having experience with all of those things and being accountable for them rather than being a guy who merely chimes in, hey that really rounds out your resume. Building software and product isn't all about writing code; here's your opportunity to find out about how the rest of it happens.
In the worst case, you decide you don't like it. Big deal. No one said you had to do the same job forever.
The great thing is that since you'd be the manager and hence, ultimately be in charge of the schedule, you can schedule yourself to contribute some code here and some code there. That's exactly what I do:
1. Give myself interesting things to do.
2. Keep the sub-project limited in scope.
3. Try and stay off the critical path.
Being a manager doesn't mean you can't be technical; it just means that your primary responsibility is to your people and not to the code.
Re:Ask more about Life, less about Tech. (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me of a few things one of my previous employers did that generally lowered morale:
1) Move to cumbersome and over-engineered "web based" electronic timesheet system, where previously our quite competent secretary would handle most of the data entry and phone-tag games.
2) Move to a cumbersome and over-engineered "web based" expense reporting system, where previously we simply handed all our receipts to our quite competent secretary who would handle most of the data entry and phone-tag games.
3) Move to a cumbersome and over-engineered "web based" training records system, where previously our quite competent secretary blah blah blah.
4) They laid off our quite competent secretary.
5) Now all the engineers were on their own, and the administrative burdens really got in the way of getting work done.
6) Cynicism ensues as efficiency drops and money spent on technology skyrockets.
7) Eventually, I left on my own accord to pursue other things.
Re:vacation...? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about something serious like:
What schedule/planning creation process do you use?
What sort of prioritization system do you use to rank the active projects?
What are some techniques you use for improving/encouraging productivity during especially streesful periods of a project?
I know that it's possible to get pat answers, but if the guy (or lady) is worth anything, he/she is going to be able to tell you about times in the past where these situations occured.
After all, *all* of our projects are on time, on budget, with minimal stress... Riiight.
Re:Ask more about Life, less about Tech. (Score:4, Interesting)
A job I worked at a few years ago, I was the only guy out of 20 women and they were the biggest bunch of backstabbers. The boss was even worse, she was playing all them against each other, but since I was the odd one out everybody assumed I was independant enough to talk to without being betrayed. Which was true, although mostly because if I did start taking sides I would have been eaten alive. I just stayed in my little neutral corner and minded my own business.
Women can be more vicious, just really subtle. I wouldn't have noticed 90% of the stuff they were doing to sabatoge each other if I hadn't been told about it because most of it wasn't even directly business related.
Stuff like "forgetting" to restock the office tissue box the day somebody with a cold was giving a presentation, then reducing the air conditioning so the air in the meeting room was a little more humid than usual so the gal's nose would run more, and then somebody would "fake" a sneeze an hour or two before the meeting and ask if the presenter had any tissues in her purse and use up half of them, causing the presenter to run out of tissues halfway through the meeting and thus sniffle through the presentation and look bad.
Of course that is a really extreme case. My current job, my department is about 50/50 male/female and there isn't any(as far as I know) massive machiavellian plotting happening.
Duty Cycle (Score:3, Interesting)
Managing Engineers (Score:3, Interesting)
They will allocate resources to the team. Determine priorities. Provide the direction to the team. Be your defender/face to other departments.
If they don't understand the technical details they might not allocate resources well, be it money, headcout etc.
If they don't know what you are doing, when people complain they will not be able to defend you, and might take on the view that you are not doing your job.
Myself I like the technical stuff, but as I work, I do more directing and discussing and liason work. I'm realizing this is very important than the technical work I was doing before. I might have been very strong at it, but I'm adding more value at the more managerial side.
I understand people think managers don't do anything, but wouldn't your group and the company be in general better off having a capable manager? If that just happens to be me, so be it.
better summed up in one question (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would you be a better boss ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Openly or covertly, the boss will eventually have to answer this question to people potentially bitter that they have been unfairly denied the opportunity for promotion.
Re:"What is your opinion on.. (Score:3, Interesting)
And what if they are doing it on their own time? Say someone takes a half hour nap, and then stays an extra half hour to make up for that time? That way you're not paying them to sleep, and they're doing it on their own time. On the other hand, if an employee is charging time that they spend sleeping, then yes, they should be disciplined, just like any person who shows up late, leaves early, and still charges a full day.
Personally, I don't ever feel so tired as to need to take naps at work. But, as other posters have mentioned, if it's a choice between (a) sleeping for an hour (and working later to make up for that time), or (b) writing shitty code while struggling to stay awake, I'll choose the nap every time. Any boss who says otherwise is too short-sighted to deserve to be anyone's boss.
Besides, how many times have you stayed up late writing code, and gotten stuck on a problem that you just can't solve? You get more and more frustrated, wasting a couple of hours until finally you give up and go to bed. And then, first thing the next morning, you look at the problem again and come up with a solution in 15 seconds.
Re:Ask more about Life, less about Tech. (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish that would happen to me. Conversing with my boss is invariably counter-productive and a big waste of time.
For example, last week I had to spend half an hour explaining to him the concept of a firewall. I told him that our network is behind a firewall, and that if he tried to connect to my machine from outside our network, he wouldn't be able to. He told me that no, our network must be behind a NAT device, because if it was behind a firewall, he'd be able to connect. He also told me that things like ZoneAlarm are not firewalls, because "all they do is block ports." And this guy is supposed to be the technical lead of the contract I'm working on.
More of a Comment than a Question list (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as interviewing techniques, the 'behavioral interview' has alway been good for me - it gives me a good feel on how people react to unconventional situations.
Interviewing managers. (Score:1, Interesting)
This relates to communication, and discipline vs. personal initiative. You want to run these questions past someone else, whose job is to try to tell you what you want to hear. Your goal, after reviewing these questions, is to ensure that someone cannot determine what you want as the answer.
"You have a project where one of the developers is the primary contributor, outperforming other people in terms of the volume and quality of his work, but personally, he's insufferable to the other team members, but defers to you. He's arrogant and condescending, and has a chip on his shoulder. Every conversation seems to be a challenge to this guy. Team members have come to you complaining about him, and at least one is near quitting. This guy's work is essential to this project, and he can't be replaced in short order (although anyone can be replaced eventually)".
Run these questions past a friend who doesn't know a lot about your company. He doesn't have to be technical. What I've found during these interviews is that these power-craving-psychopath managers tell you exactly what you want to hear when asking straight questions, but they start to grow horns when they start answering questions about a real scenario.
Never a "boss" (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no "boss." There's only someone who allows you to do your job, and sometimes directs you as to what your job is. A micromanager, for example, isn't your boss -- that's someone who's doing you job, which isn't his job. A good boss is an enabler. He may download porno all day. Or he may go to meetings that aren't worth your time (he'll be able to tell you in five minutes that which took two hours to discuss).
A boss isn't a co-worker nor a friend. He's a partner.
Must have a clue (Score:3, Interesting)
Example - freshly employed manager of a non-destructive testing section, coming in so the head technician can go out more and make money for the company. He was unfortunately full of bullshit, full of politics (wanted to become my boss in another section as well) and not willing to learn about the basics required to arrange schedules (actually put it as an advantage that he was no "pedjudiced" by knowing anything about the industry - this is after four months in the job). A big project came up due to the companies reputation - the client was willing to pay almost whatever was asked. Large amounts of radiography where carried out, which has to be done when no-one is about to absorb the (in this case) gamma radiation - so it had to be done at night when not much was happening on site and people could stay out of the area without slowing down the project too much.
This wasn't taking into account, the guy paniced and tried to get everyone to work at reduced rates (he had to put on more people) and without overtime despite the fact that he was employing everyone available in the geogrphical area that had the qualifications and couldn't afford to piss them off too much (so intervention had to come in from above to stop everyone quitting). He also turned away other work in a contemptous way to long standing clients during the duration, even when the schedule had people available (eg. we don't need work from your company, we've got a big project from company X). Needless to say, the big project ran at a huge loss, the other clients never came back so there was no work, a lot of staff were laid off, and eventually the useless manager and his boss were sacked. The head technician (after he was re-hired) got as many clients back and staff back as he could, and other portions of the company kept things afloat. A few questions would have saved jobs, and would have given that manager a chance to work in that industry a bit longer.
The manager has to know enough about a technical disipline to allow those who work for him to function. They need to know that without software component X no work can get out the door, or that the accountants 3GHz machine is too much and the 166MHz machine used to do the builds is not enough. They also need to act as a bridge between the farmer mentality (technical skills -eg. times to plant or specific coding algorithms) and the barbarian mentalily (just buy or steal things as a solution to every problem), and fend off barbarians so their farmers can produce stuff for the company.
Translation... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Sell the project he's already been told will grow his stock options the fastest.
2. Obfuscate political factors that would inspire you to get a better job with better pay elsewhere.
3. Badger, wheedle, cajole, or guilt you into overcommitting yourself because that looks so much better on his Gantt charts.
4. Praise his own accomplishments while belittling the misguided, lame efforts of his competitors.
Thankfully it's been a long time since I've been around of those managers, but they do leave an impression on you.
Re:Important Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"What is your opinion on.. (Score:3, Interesting)